Intel confirms Haswell chipset USB bug

In a Product Change Notification bulletin from Intel confirmed that the current Lynx Point 8-series and C220 chipsets for Haswell have a bug that causes USB 3.0 devices to disappear after entering S3 standby mode. The issue has been fixed in stepping C2, this updated chipset will start sampling on April 19th but won't hit the market until late July.

According to the PCN the new stepping will be sampled to customers starting April 19th. Final product will be available starting July 15th. Intel also makes clear that customers must be ready to receive the new stepping by July 31st. In other words, this means by then the old stepping will be phased out and gradually replaced by the new one. Due to the minor change needed to fix the problem, Intel doesn't expect a major impact on customers. The new stepping is basically a drop in replacement.

While an official release date for Haswell hasn't been given yet, Intel is expected to introduce the new chip before the availability of the new chipset stepping. Reportedly Intel let customers sign an agreement to acknowledge the presence of the bug if they wanted to obtain Haswell APUs for launch. The bug in question causes nuisances like USB devices to disappear after entering standby. Detachable devices would have to be reconnected to be found again.

Intel Confirms TV Plans - 02/14/2013 09:36 AM
Intel says it does have plans to offer its own television service this year, as rumors suggested, but it won&amp;rsquo;t quite be the a la carte alternative that cord cutters have dreamed about. Inste...

Intel Core i5-3450S and Atom Z670 to go EOL - 11/06/2012 02:01 PM
That's end of life. Intel has this week announced the discontinuance schedule for two more products, the 2.8 GHz Core i5-3450S desktop CPU and the 1.5 GHz Atom Z670 mobile chip as TPU reports today. The i5-3450S will be available for orders until May 24th, 2013 and will ship until November 8th (for the tray version) or until supplies are depleted (boxed).

Intel Core i7-3970X - 11/01/2012 08:24 AM
It seems that Intel's new flagship, the Core i7-3970X Extreme Edition, is already being sold in Singapore for S$1,425 (about US$1,167), including local taxes. This six-core chip is still based on the 32nm Sandy Bridge-E architecture, it has a LGA2011 socket and a 150W TDP, 20W more than the Core i7-3960X.

Can't be fixed? Intel will release a new stepping that will fix it. A disconnected USB device after resuming from sleep doesn't break the chip.

A new stepping to resolve the issue is their admission that it breaks the chip. It breaks the chip so much they have to fix it...with a new stepping. If it didn't break the chip, they would just sell the chip.

Rocket science.

deltatux

Posts: 19047
Joined: 2009-01-25

#4571581 Posted on: 04/06/2013 11:52 PMFar as i concerned it for laptops, Desktops are not ment to be lower power devices laptops are. Power saving features something desktops useless imo, Stoves,Microwaves, Washers,dryers AC, Etc and alot of othe appliances use way more power. and power a desktop draws a month is gona nothing close compared to the other stuff.

Huh? I did say that this is more of an issue for laptops, not desktop. What are you saying? lol

deltatux

Loophole35

Posts: 8669
Joined: 2011-09-21

#4571596 Posted on: 04/07/2013 12:29 AM
An SSD doesn't save me from my motherboard doing a check of every port of every controller one by one. I have about 9001 controllers on this thing.

Gah, I wanted to buy a Haswell system as soon as the parts were available.

Both of my rigs my main on the Z68 and my Z77 don't take but about 10 seconds to go through its post dance the Z77 takes even less I have to start spamming delete as I'm pressing the power button to go into the BIOS. Have tried disabling everything your not using on your board?

JohnMaclane

Posts: 4825
Joined: 2004-05-20

#4571601 Posted on: 04/07/2013 12:38 AM
A new stepping to resolve the issue is their admission that it breaks the chip. It breaks the chip so much they have to fix it...with a new stepping. If it didn't break the chip, they would just sell the chip.

Rocket science.

Breaks the chip? If only you knew what other IC companies sell. It is definitely a mishap but not a deal breaker. Most of the time the decision boils down to OEM and market pressure (Time to market being a priority), it is better to have a chip with documented and avoidable problems, than to waste fab time running them under capacity.

Plus consumer market standards allow chipmakers to sell chips with these problems, otherwise half the products people want would take years more to reach the market. For example like for automotive MCUs which have 5 year long product cycle (sometimes longer) with strict guidelines for mission critical applications.

Exodite

Posts: 1652
Joined: 2006-09-28

#4571619 Posted on: 04/07/2013 01:05 AM
Not that this particular bug would bother me personally but I find it interesting that so few people use sleep mode on their desktops.

I don't turn my desktop off, ever.

The power draw in sleep mode is less than my watt-meter can reliably measure and it sleeps/wakes in a few seconds rather than having to go through the whole minute-long boot process.

I reboot something like once or twice a month, with the monthly Windows updates and if some other software requires it to update correctly.

BarryB

Posts: 1105
Joined: 2007-07-11

#4571648 Posted on: 04/07/2013 02:06 AM
I wonder if all those initial 'broken' chips sent to retail will have the issue mentioned when ordering or even displayed online?

Looks like I'll be waiting for the new stepping regardless of the fact I use sleep but don't have any USB 3.0 devices permanently plugged in.

Neo Cyrus

Posts: 8588
Joined: 2006-02-14

#4571659 Posted on: 04/07/2013 02:41 AM

Both of my rigs my main on the Z68 and my Z77 don't take but about 10 seconds to go through its post dance the Z77 takes even less I have to start spamming delete as I'm pressing the power button to go into the BIOS. Have tried disabling everything your not using on your board?

Unfortunately just about every controller is in use except for the one for external SATA. It's been a long time since I've really even looked through the BIOS, I'm unsure if they can even be disabled. Either way disabling that particular one won't save anything more than a second. I don't even remember how many controllers this thing has, but needless to say it's a lot.

warlord

Posts: 701
Joined: 2012-10-22

#4571711 Posted on: 04/07/2013 05:13 AM
sleep is pointless now with ssd a fresh shutdown or restart is better for the health/stability.

sverek

Posts: 2997
Joined: 2011-01-02

#4571809 Posted on: 04/07/2013 11:46 AM

That don't save or have SSD's.

Sleeping mode doesn't have anything to do with SSD or other storages. It keeps feeding (refreshing) memory, so when you wake it up, everything you had on memory still there. Therefore no drastic access to storage on wake.

WindtalkerCS

Posts: 450
Joined: 2004-05-12

#4571978 Posted on: 04/07/2013 06:11 PM

Sleeping mode doesn't have anything to do with SSD or other storages. It keeps feeding (refreshing) memory, so when you wake it up, everything you had on memory still there. Therefore no drastic access to storage on wake.

He is saying that with an SSD the boot time is greatly reduced so using sleep mode is less of a requirement...

Denial

Posts: 11067
Joined: 2004-05-16

#4572025 Posted on: 04/07/2013 07:10 PM
The advantage of sleep is that it keeps the session alive. If I shut down I need to re-open everything in the morning. When I sleep everything is there exactly the way I left it. I haven't actually shut my computer down in ages, aside from the necessary reasons.

TheSarge

Posts: 777
Joined: 2008-06-15

#4572109 Posted on: 04/07/2013 09:14 PM
This is why I'm never an early adopter. If you wanna be a guinea pig or rat-in-a-maze, have at it, but I don't need the latest greatest thing that badly.

This is why I'm never an early adopter. If you wanna be a guinea pig or rat-in-a-maze, have at it, but I don't need the latest greatest thing that badly.

wise words,mate.

deltatux

Posts: 19047
Joined: 2009-01-25

#4572192 Posted on: 04/07/2013 10:56 PM

This is why I'm never an early adopter. If you wanna be a guinea pig or rat-in-a-maze, have at it, but I don't need the latest greatest thing that badly.

It's always best to wait a couple months after it's introduced to adopt. I rarely am the person to buy new tech out of the gate for this reason. There's always errata on chipsets and CPUs. There's also always new revisions to them.